BIOSHOCK
by Slimes
Summary: The greatest city ever built. The finest artists, scientists, doctors, philosophers. A place when a man can make his own life. Rapture. No other word can describe it. A novelization.
1. Welcome To Rapture

_Hello all. After finishing Bioshock, I am stunned. This is one of the greatest artistic acheivements in a long time. Unfortunately, not all have the ability or opportunity to play this wonder. I have started writing a novelization, and in second person, to try to stay faithful to the original. Sorry if the first installment is sub-par, 2nd-person perspective takes a little getting used to._

**BIOSHOCK**

Do not consider Collectivists as "sincere but deluded idealists". The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal; brutality is not "idealistic," no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

-Ayn Rand

Not armies, not nations, have advanced the race; but here and there, in the course of ages, an individual has stood up and cast his shadow over the world.

-Edwin Hubbell Chapin

**1**

It started with a plane.

You can't put your finger on it, but oh well, right? Might as well just enjoy yourself. A nice relaxing plane trip? Check. Unusually cool summer breeze? Check. Best decade in American history? The Sixties? Perhaps. You kick back and light up your favorite brand. Taking out your wallet, you touch the image of your loving family. The memories put a sappy smile on your face, but you get pulled back to the present when you remember the strange gift you received recently. It has a red ribbon and blue wrapping paper. It has a note attached. It reads,

"To Jack, with love from mom and dad….."

You have no time to read any more. The plane jolts and you fall out of your seat. One passenger sitting next to you looks to you in pure horror. The plane falls.

Water.

Dark.

Crashing.

Burning.

Screaming.

Dying.

Death.

_DeadDeadDeadDead_- You must be dead.

Light. Not Dead. A propeller flies past and lets you know this fact. Surrounded by water, you swim up. You panic as lights dance around you. You break the surface and gasp. Your lungs painfully fill with air.

"I'm alive," You utter, stunned. "I'm alive!" You shout, to unseen corpses. You wonder if there are any survivors, but the burning submerged plane answers without any spoken response. You see a large lighthouse in the distance and you swim towards it, relieved. When you finally reach the large stairway leading up to it, you pull yourself up. Freezing and soaked, but mostly unharmed, you stare at the large iron doors, and step inside. Cautiously, anyway. It's dark.

"Hello? Anyone there?" No response. When the door slams shut behind you, you jump. Locked. _That wasn't the damn wind. You just had to go into the forbidding darkness. Like I had a choice!_ As you argue with yourself, the lights start to come on. A huge statue of a man is attached to the wall. A large banner reads, "No Gods or Kings, only men." _I don't think this is a lighthouse. Or, just a lighthouse,_ you think. It's like some cult meeting place. Anyway, with no other logical option, you descend the stairs. Doors open for you on chains, and you walk through. At the bottom of the stairs is a large bathysphere. As you step inside, there is a lever on the far side of it. After a moment's hesitation, you pull it, and the door closes. As it starts slowly moving down, you sit down on a small bench, heart pounding in your chest. This is not smart. Why the hell would you pull that lever? A small window is available to you on the door. You hear a projector chug to life, and cheesy fanfare. A picture of a man sitting at a desk appears. "From the desk of Andrew Ryan," it says next to him. A thick Russian accent comes out of the projector.

"I am Andrew Ryan and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?" You scoff. You want to hear this. A picture of a hard working farmhand wiping (of course) sweat from his brow appears.

"No, says the man in Washington. It belongs to the poor." An Eagle descending on the farmhand from the top of the White House.

"No, says the man in the Vatican. It belongs to God." You can't help but chuckle. Now a large hand is looming over the man. He certainly is an unlucky fellow.

"No, says the man in Moscow. It belongs to everyone." Finally, the man's attacker changes into a hammer and sickle.

"I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose ... Rapture."

Your attitude changes from sneering contempt to awe, because the projection screen lowers, and you see…a city. Underwater. You stand up abruptly and hit your head on the ceiling, but it only briefly distracts you. Giant buildings and neon signs. Statues with tributes to the Greeks. Large tubes connect the "sky" scrapers, and your jaw drops as a humpback whale swims by far below.

"A city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well." As Ryan's voice fades a new one surfaces, coming from a radio…somewhere. Static, and then, faintly, "…but the lighthouse is all lit up like hellfire. Looks like some kinda plane crash." The voice was slightly Irish, and he was talking to someone. American, probably.

"But we're in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, how could it-."

"Dunno. You'd best get over there, and be quick about. The splicers are comin."

"You've gotta be kidding. How do you know someone's even coming?"

"'Cause we got a bathysphere on its way down, that means we've got company."

"O-okay, just one more minute. The 'sphere - the 'sphere is coming up now-!"

"Johnny! Security's banding off all over! Get a move on!"

_Splicer? What the hell is that?_ You're confused. The sphere approaches a series of rings, which when put together, form a sentence.

**ALL GOOD THINGS**

**FLOW**

**INTO THE CITY**

The end of "into the city," crackles and fades. You move into a tunnel heading up, and the sphere ascends. As it reaches the top, you see a man backing away from…something. Someone? It was humanoid.

"Please, lady…I didn't mean no trespass. Just…just don't hurt me. Please, let me go…you can keep my gun! You can-!"

He is cut off, as she darts forward, and impales him with what appear to be hooks. She rips them out, and he falls over. You press against the back of the bathysphere. _Godohgodohgod._

You are going to die.

In some shitty sphere, thousands of leagues under the ocean. Like that Jules Verne story…what was it? You can't remember, and it doesn't matter.

She breathes heavily on the other side. "Is it someone new…?" She lets out a shriek and disappears from site. A thud on the top of the sphere. Two guesses who that is. Her demonic claws tear at the ceiling and sparks fly.

_Prepare to evacuate soul in 5…4….3…2….gone._

She's gone. She left. You breathe a sigh of relief but panic when the door opens.

"Would you kindly pick up that shortwave radio?" You jump and look to your left. There it is, plain to see. You pick it up and listen in to it.

"I don't know how you survived that plane crash, but I've never been one to question providence. I'm Atlas, and I aim to keep you alive. Now keep on moving, we're gonna have to get you to higher ground. Take a deep breath and step out of the bathysphere. I won't leave you twisting in the wind."

"M-m-my n-name's Jack…" You reply, trying to steady yourself as you step out.

"Jack, eh? That's a fine name. Wish I could say it's nice to meet you, but in the circumstances…."

"Okay. Now, would you mind telling me where the hell I am? All I know is that some individualist built this undersea "utopia". Also, that the prick's idealism didn't last too long," You say.

"Yeah, this is Rapture, all right. I came here looking for paradise. We all did. A place where a man could make an honest day's pay and not be fucked over by any president, or monarch, or whoever."

You walk in silence, stepping over a couple of protest signs that say: Rapture's Dead, Ryan Doesn't own us, or Fuck Fontaine.

You look around the large room and can't help but marvel at the intricacy of the architecture. _This Ryan guy musta had a lot of time on his hands. Heh._ You had stepped off a red carpet, which trailed down and around, lining your path, including the steps at the far northwest. There's a banner to the left, keeping you from falling into the water. On the right is a large see-through glass, through which you can see various other buildings. You run up and turn at the foot of the stairs.

"We're gonna need to draw her out of hiding. But you're gonna have to trust me." Atlas says.

"I'll wrap you in a sheet….." Your blood turns cold at the sound of her voice. Before you can react, a bizarre flying metal thing with a propeller comes into view. It has several small green eyes, and a mounted machine gun. It starts firing and the "woman" falls to the floor.

"How do you like that, sister?" Atlas calls laughing and triumphant. She tries to escape but is pelted with bullets and falls.

"Now, would you kindly find a crowbar or something? Bloody splicers sealed Johnny in before they…goddamn splicers!" You look around at the top of the stairs. There's rubble everywhere. You smile as you find a rather large wrench. Hitting a mess of stones in front of you, you clear an enterance to a small crawl space. Crawling on hands and knees, you begin to recall the days of your youth….


	2. Plasmids

I'll try to update weekly, but I can't promise anything

_I'll try to update weekly, but I can't promise anything. Enjoy. Oh, and remember, this is alternative history, so games could've been made before the 60's._

"We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory."

-Georges Duhamel

**2.**

An odd time to start recalling days past, eh? You're sitting in the front seat of your parents' car, because, well, the back always made you sick. You look behind you, and your little brother waves at you. He's starting high school soon. You've told him again and again that you're going to cut that long brown hair of his if he doesn't-it's driving you crazy. Light skinned, like mom and dad, he has eyes that members of your family constantly argue about what color they are. He's skinny, but doesn't have any real muscles.

Mom has had a weight problem for a while now, and she tries to work out, but it doesn't do much. Despite that, her doctor says she is very healthy for her weight. She has shorter hair than your brother, but just barely. Her's is black though. She wears glasses, just like dad, and is a children's librarian. You couldn't be more proud.

The one odd thing about your parents is that they're old. You're in college now, but your brother still lives at home. She's in her fifties, and he's about ten years older.

Dad is tall and bald, but unlike most 60-year olds, he's a fitness and health nut. He could fight most guys age 20 and win. Every morning at 4:00 am, he wakes up and works out for a few hours. Most doctors tell him a man his age shouldn't be that active. He pretty much tells them to fuck off. He constantly worries-although he would say it's "being prepared"-about food. And so….

Organic burgers.

Organic fruit.

Organic milk.

Organic hot dogs.

Oh, and grass-fed if it's possible.

Personally, you find it a bit silly, but it's not your decision. He works jobs both as a personal trainer and an English teacher to foreign students. He loves to read, especially about philosophy, and he loves action movies.

Your mom's a bit weird too. She has a bit of an anger problem, and will some times start laughing out loud for no reason-at least that you can tell. She has a bit of an anarchist in her, rejecting modern society's values.

Your brother looks up to you, and is a lot like you, but definitely has his own opinions and values. Most teenagers don't read philosophy, or give a shit about anything. That's where he differs. You've influenced his musical tastes too, with your obscure bands and artists. Seriously. How many 14 year olds listen to Simon and Garfunkel? The only thing you don't click with him on, is he loves to play video games. He tries to tell you that they can be art too, and not just entertainment.

You scoff at this.

"You guys happy to see grandma and grandpa again?" Your mom asks. Your brother nods, and looks at you.

"I'm just glad Jack took time from his busy schedule to come too." He says. It's funny, in most books you've read, the older and younger brother always hate each other. You and him have always gotten along-for the most part anyway. Your mom is driving, and she puts in a CD of Motzart. She loves classical music, and you find that you kind of do too.

"I wish your dad would stop smoking," Dad says to mom. "It's bad for him."

"Yeah," Mom replies. "He might die before the young age of ninety." Your dad laughs at this and touches her shoulder in appreciation. Her sarcasm was always funny to him, and you have to admit, she has her many charms. Your brother speaks up.

"I keep telling you mom, you should be a comedian."Mom turns to you and says,

"My daddy is smarter than Einstein! Stronger than Hercules! Is your daddy better than mine mister? Not if he goes to the Gatherer's Garden's, he isn't! Daddy's get spliced at the Gatherer's Garden's!"

Wait. What?

A small stone hits you on the head, and you are rudely jolted back to the present. You sigh and kiss the picture of your family. You wonder if you'll ever see them again. You come out of the hole and locate the source of the voice, at the top of a 2-way staircase from within a vending machine. Directly coming out of the space, there's a door, but it won't open. A control next to it is spitting out sparks and small electrical currents. On either side of the door, you see another large see through glass. A school of multicolored fish swim by.

The view is breathtaking.

Leading to the door is another, larger red carpet. On the opposite side of the room is that staircase. The left side is on fire, so you take the only safe path. A large sign says: Plasmids. You look at the odd vending machine, with its odd statues of little girls on either side. At the slot at the bottom, there is a needle filled with red liquid.

_What the hell…? Am I supposed to inject myself with this?_ You ask yourself. _Is it safe? Well…they're selling it at a vending machine-but, Jesus, injections? Oh well, I'm pretty fucked anyway down here. And I can't seem to go anywhere without it. That door is a dead end….unless…_

You felt the same unease walking in the iron doors. Pulling the bathysphere lever.

And you're still alive.

You take a deep breath and plunge it into your arm. At first nothing happens.

Wait.

Your veins are glowing blue.

"Fuuuuuuuckk?!" You scream in a mixture of disbelief, horror, anger, and dispair. Lightning jumps out of your fingers and you stumble back, feeling light headed.

"Steady now. Your genetic code is being rewritten. Just hold on, and everything will be fine." Atlas's voice comes out distant, foreign. You fall back over something. The railing. You scream as you fall to the floor and black out.

Your eyes open slowly, and when they do, a grotesque man is standing over you. You can't move. Too weak. You can only see his tattered brown clothes, his sickly grayish skin, and his face, which is covered by a chrome cat mask. There's another one to the left, but you can only see his yellow pant legs and brown shoes.

"This little fish looks like he just had his cherry popped! Wonder if he's still got some ADAM on him?" The one closest says, kneeling down to look at you.

"You hear that? Let's bug!"

"Weak! You're weak chopped!"

"This little fish ain't worth toeing it with no Big Daddy!" This one runs off.

"Yellow! Always have been!" The other calls back before turning to you.

"You'll be no better off with the metal daddy, little fish. See you floating in the briney…"

Fade out. Black again. Heavy footfalls in the distance. Fade in. A little girl comes to view. She has a sickly green face and glowing yellow eyes. She is wearing a faded and torn purple dress and is holding some sort of large needle. She has black matted down hair. Large metal boots stand behind her.

"Look, Mr. Bubbles! It's an angel. I can see light coming from his belly." A low roar from whatever that thing behind her is. When she inspects you closer, "Wait a minute. He's still breathing." Another low roar. "It's alright, I know he'll be an angel soon."

Fade out. Black. Slowly coming back. You stand up.

"You all right, boyo? First time plasmid's a real kick from a mule. But, there's nothing like a fistful of lightning, now is there?" Atlas says.

_This guy's alright,_ You think. There's only one thing that concerns you.

"Hey, Atlas, can I ask a question?"

"Yeh?"

"How can you see me?"

"Rapture's got this room down in central control. They got a hell of a lot o' security cameras unguarded. Hacked 'em easily. If you find an autohack tool, you'll be a lot better off. Oh and call me Jim. Or Jimmy. It's my real name. I needed to use an alias to keep my self safe…but tha's a long time ago." You hear him sigh.

"What happened?"

"I lead the resistance. Things fucked up down 'ere real fast." The static fades out, and it seems Atlas has put down his radio. Besides, you can find nothing to say. He lifted his left arm and found he didn't have to think to hard to shoot electricity. It shot the control next to the door, causing it to open. Not that it amazes you much in your current mood.

_And what mood would that be? If I knew, I'd tell you._ Arguing with yourself isn't very productive. You go through the door without bothering to look at the "Welcome to Rapture" sign. You go through the tunnel and the door at the end. You go up a staircase with paintings on either side of its pink walls. You come out into a large room with giant orb-shaped lights and multicolored banners that say things like: Independence, creativity, commerce, liberty and ascendance. Again you laugh at the irony of this whole situation. There's a sliding door at the far side of the room with a clock and a statue of a man above it. You go through the door, and see about 5 elevators. Only one seems usable, so you step in and press the button. As the door shuts, your radio cracks and you take it from your pocket and put it to your ear.

"Listen, I've got a family. I need to get them out of here. But the splicers have cut me off from them. If you can reach them in Neptune's Bounty, then maybe, just maybe…." You hear desperation and true sadness in this man's voice.

You know then that you can trust him.

A part of the ceiling falls away. You see a balding woman in rags pounding on a door and calling out to no one. You can't help but wonder how this all happened.

"I know you must feel like the unluckiest man in the world right now, but you're the only hope I'll ever see my wife and child again. Go to Neptune's Bounty. Find my family. Please."

"A-Jim," You correct yourself. "I'll help you. I'll do more than that though. Once this is all over, we'll get out of this hell hole. I'll take you and your family out to a bar, and I'll buy you a drink. I'd like that a lot." Silence for a moment, and then you hear a brief choking sound.

_He's fighting back tears,_ You realize.

"Thank you kindly," He says in a solemn tone.

"I mean, you are irish, right?" You grin. He laughs.

"Yeah. Can't wait to drink myself outta my head." You laugh together, and it gives you a slight feeling of joy that you cheered him up. The elevator opens with a 'ding.' A large statue of a hand holding a chain hangs on the wall. The banner below it says "The great chain is guided by our hands.' You're up on another balcony. The left way leads to a door blocked by a gate, and on the right you see a sign for "Kashmir restaurant." Inside, you see a lit area with a grisly shadow of a woman crooning over a baby carriage.

"…when you are the only one, then you'll be the lonely one….and when you are the only one, you will be the lonely one…"

You approach carefully.

"Ma'am? I just, I-" You cry out in pain as she spins around and hits you in the face with a crobar.

"Baby and me, baby and me, baby and me!" She shrieks. You duck under her next swing and hit her with a bolt of lightning. When she falls to the floor writhing, you put her out of her misery with your wrench. Quick and mostly painless. Atlas spoke up once she was dead.

"Plasmids changed everything. They destroyed our bodies, our minds. We couldn't handle it. Best friends butchering one another, babies strangled in cribs. The whole city went to hell."

"So, who introduced Plasmids?" You ask.

"Son of a bitch named Fontaine. Frank Fontaine. He was a sorry lowlife who only wanted people's money, no matter what the result of his product. He was one of the main reasons this place suffocated itself. Ryan and Fontaine started a civil war down here. Fontaine was doing more than just sellin mutant drugs. Everythin' he did was seedy. Problem was, Ryan could never catch him. Too damn clever, he was. But don't worry. He's dead now."

"You said earlier you were in a resistance. Why?"

"Ryan got desperate. He was losing control. He started becoming like the very people he hated. Wanker became a dictator. Someone had to look out for the innocent. People looked up to me. But I ain't much now. These days I just try to get by."

You look in the baby carriage and find a 45. revolver.

"Hey Jim," You say. "Was this place built on Irony? Because I just found a forty-five in a baby carriage.

"Well, I suppose idealism comes with it's fair share of irony, Jack." You make your way through a deserted bar. Broken bottles and blood are everywhere and a large banner reading "Happy New Year 1960" is hung up. You notice a trail of blood leading into the ladies bathroom. There's an enormous hole in the wall in the back. You push a corpse aside and walk through. You look to be above some kind of stage. A little girl below is stabbing a corpse with a needle. She (and her needle) look familiar. There is a catwalk leading to a staircase going down on the opposite side. You walk one foot at a time, careful not to fall.

"Careful now. Would you kindly lower that weapon for a minute?" You follow his advice.

"You think that's a child down there?" Atlas asks. "Don't be fooled. She's a Little Sister now. Somebody went and turned a sweet baby girl into a monster. Whatever you thought about right and wrong on the surface, well, that don't count for much down in Rapture. Those Little Sisters, they carry ADAM – the genetic material that keeps the wheels of Rapture turning. Everybody wants it, everybody needs it." You get to the other side and go down the stairs. You can see the Little Sister through the glass. A splicer comes in a nearby door with a wrench, looks around, then approaches the girl. He puts his finger to his lips to tell her to be quiet. She screams and he hits her. He tries to make another swing, but is frozen by the sound of a loud roar. A large metal creature drops down and you take a couple of steps back in fear. It looks like a man in a dive suit, at least somewhat. It's about ten feet tall. It has a round bulbous head with several eyes, all glowing furiously red. It has a thin grate-like material surrounding its face, and no visible mouth. Even the torso of the suit looks somewhat bulbous. Instead of a left hand, the creature has a wicked drill which is spattered with blood. On it's back are two large oxygen tanks with a decent amount of cracks. All over, the suit is rusted and looks aged. Its boots are worn and faded, and losing their color. Shaking uncontrollably, you hide under the stairs and curl into a ball.

You're a child.

_"But you're not alone."_

Mommy's here. Mommy is here to hold you and love you and never let you go. Never let anything bad happen to you.

You look around this frozen hell and realize with a dull sadness, she is not here. Apparently you were not the only one stunned. The splicer seems to just be snapping out of his stupor. Panicked, he pulls out a gun and shoots the metal creature. It seems to be even more angered at this, and rushes the man. He shoots frantically, but the bullets merely bounce off of it. The monster strikes the man with the side of his drill like a baseball bat, knocking him into the back wall. Before he can slide down, the creature slams its drill into the helpless splicer's body and starts it up. Blood splatters on the wall behind and on the window that you are viewing this through. It then takes the corpse and smashes it into the glass, shattering it, and leaving the man draped over the wall in between, a glass shard impaled into what's left of his chest. The thing roars dully and it's eyes change to yellow. The small girl smiles and walks hand in hand with it, out the door and out of sight.

"That's a Big Daddy," Said Atlas, almost breathlessly. "She gathers ADAM, and he protects her." You turn to the right to find a locked gate. You hit it with your wrench and it opens pretty easily. You turn to the left and wind up in a big open room. Yet another banner hangs, this one saying: "Altruism is the root of all wickedness." Water pools below, and part of the balcony seems to have caved in. On the left wall there is an entranceway to Neptune's Bounty. Just what you're looking for. You head towards it, but a gate slams shut in your face. The lights in the room turn red.

"Aw, Goddammit! It's Ryan!" Atlas says, distressed.

"He's still alive?" You ask. "Shit."

"There's another way. Head to Medical!" A gang of Splicers come from both sides of the partially broken balcony. You shoot a flurry of bullets back at them as you run. You also electrify the water, making it near impossible to follow. You run in a doorway that says "Medical Pavilion." You dash through the red-lit halls, leaping over a pile of rubble and making a turn. You head inside a gateway and it slams behind you. You try to make it through the entrance to Medical but that closes too. The gate opposite of where you came in is locked as well. The lights dim, and a TV with the words: Please stand by crackles to life.

"Aw, Christ, you're trapped! I'll try to override the exit from here." Atlas leaves you in the dark. Alone.

A face appears on the screen.

"So tell me, friend: which one of the bitches sent you: the KGB wolf, or the CIA jackal? Here's the news: Rapture isn't some sunken ship for you to plunder, and Andrew Ryan isn't a giddy socialite who can be slapped around by government muscle. And with that, farewell. Or dosvedanya, whichever you prefer."

Atlas's voice comes back to you.

"I got it! Get out of there! Get out now!" With Splicers probably following, you run through the bulkhead as fast as you can.


	3. Surgery

"Do you know a cure for me?"  
"Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water."  
"Salt water?" I asked him.  
"Yes," he said, "in one form or another, sweat, tears or the salt sea."

-Isak Dinesen

**3.**

Utopia.

It means a perfect society.

So if that's true…how come so many of them have fallen? Tumbling down, crushing women and children, and with them, their idealism? It's not a new concept to you. I mean, you've read a lot of science fiction in your time. You've read a lot about Utopias (both real and fictional), and you wonder. Being a philosophy major doesn't help much. Men and women with lofty ideals try to make a better life, in a better place. They try to prevent war, and prejudice, and disease. Somehow, every story ends the same. Idealism blinds, and it destroys, unfortunately. Idealism can be a great thing, but it's never enough.

For some reason, man just can't beat the system.

Good god, is mankind _that_ fucked?

Your mind has been racing since you came down here. The place that's moist and cold and dead. Corpses line the walls and floors, speaking without words, staring without eyes. Death himself looms over you, cold, and steel, and faded. Water slowly creeps in, pooling on the ground like the blood of the woman you just killed a while back. You rationalize that she's probably better off, but it doesn't make you feel much better.

"Now you've met Andrew Ryan," Atlas says sneeringly. "The bloody king of Rapture."

"No Gods or Kings my ass," You reply. "Another irony. Fantastic."

"You got a point there, Jack. As you can see, Ryan was a bit of a hypocrite. But there'll be plenty of time to talk later. For now, find your way to the emergency access."

"Hypocrite's an understatement," You say, half to yourself, half out loud. You put the radio in your pocket and you pull out your gun. You raise your left hand, and it sparks with electricity. As strange as it feels, you also get a adrenaline rush, a high, like when you light up a cigarette. You know the feeling. But, it's amplified. The floor is black and white square tiled. Thin pillars support the roof. There's a vending machine with a picture of a clown to your immediate left, and an advertisement for Chewy Chocolate (It's chocolicious!) on the far left wall. Ahead of you, another double staircase, and beyond that, an abandoned secretary's desk with a small lamp on it and a smaller neon "Medical Pavilion" sign than the one at the top of the double staircase. This staircase however, is curved, and much shorter and seemingly more stable than the last one you'd used. You approach the desk, to find that the register is knocked over, and that a dead woman is lying in a pool of blood behind it. You feel bad about robbing the dead, but you take whatever money is in the machine.

You go over to the clown-adorned machine and use your newly acquired cash to purchase something, hopefully of need. You buy a first aid kit, an Eve hypo (a miniature plasmid "dispensing" needle), and some pistol rounds. The door near the machine reads "Emergancy Access" above it. You go through it, and into a dimly lit corridor, with a larger room at the end and to the right. Immediately ahead of you is a smaller desk than you encountered outside, with a reading lamp and an odd tape player looking thing. You go over to it and pick it up.

"Hey Jim. What's this?" You ask.

"Hold it up so I can see it, and I'll tell ya." Atlas replies. "You hold it up to where you think there might be a camera." He laughs.

"Ah. That's an audio diary. You'll find plenty of those scattered around this dump. People left 'em behind. Good way to get aquainted with the history of this place." You hold down one of the buttons on it, and it comes to life.

"Ryan and Adam, Adam and Ryan... all those years of study, and was I ever truly a surgeon before I met them? How we plinked away with our scalpels and toy morality. Yes, we could lop a boil here, and shave down a beak there, but... but could we really change anything? No. But Adam gives us the means to do it. And Ryan frees us from the phony ethics that held us back. Change your look, change your sex, change your race. It's yours to change, nobody else's."

Surgeon, huh? Well, this is the Medical Pavilion. Obviously a Ryan fan, by the sound of it. You put it down and continue on your way. Heading to the right, you come to yet another double-staircase, this one partially blocked by wall. You find that you can go around, and you head on up. At the top, there is a switch on a console overlooking the balcony, and an emergency access sign overhead. Two computer monitors are placed on the left and right of the console. At the moment, they are turned off. You flip the switch and the lights turn red. Both monitors hum to life, twin "Access Denied," in glowing red letters being burned into your mind. You panic. A female voice says something over the P.A., but in your state of mind, it's blurred. A door opens behind you and a bullet wizzes by your face. A woman with pale skin, smeared black eyeliner, frazzled blonde graying hair and a torn up bathrobe screams at you in some nonsensical, indistinct language. You duck to the floor and shoot her in her left leg, causing her to fall over. She tries to shoot you again, but her aim is terrible and you swing your wrench at her head like a home-run bat. The cold steel of your tool connects with a sickening crunch of shattering skull. She falls face down, blood coming from her eyes. You wretch over the balcony a couple of times, just in time to hear footsteps running, getting closer. You go through the door and see a mask-wearing doctor with a gore-stained smock running at you with a sledgehammer. You shoot him in the face and he drops, brains painting the narrow, cold, pipe lined walls. You take several deep breaths.

"To get through Emergency Access, you'll need Dr. Steinman's key….but don't expect him to hand it over outta the milk of human kindness. Steinman ain't that kind-and frankly, I'm not even sure he's still human." Atlas says.

Steinman…you wonder if he's the one who left the diary behind. As you exit from the mechanical hallway behind you, you enter into a glass encased balcony overlooking the main square of Medical, which you just came out of. You find a loaded tommy gun, and another switch, which according to some diagrams on the desk, is the electrical override switch. You pull it, and then backtrack, descending the stairs, and hearing screams coming from the adjacent hallways.

"Now you've done it, here they come!" Atlas warns. Hiding behind a the bottom of the stairs, you decide to test your new weapon. You've fired guns before, but only once in your life. A kindly marine let you try it out, while you gushed about how cool it was. You were younger then, and not fighting for your life. Under the circumstances, it's a little harder. You see the first of them, a woman, come out. You aim and pull the trigger. You can't believe how easy, and how little kickback there is as the bullets rip through her flesh like tissue paper. Three men come behind her, but they die just as easy. Not hearing anything more, you sigh, but reload, just in case. You go back out into the main hall, and look towards the entrance of the pavilion. There's another two-sided staircase, leading up to another floor. You take it, heading past the sculpture of the world with the medical pavilion sign on it, and down a narrow hallway, lined with paintings. The door at the end slides open as you near it, and you step out into a new hall. It's a 2-way intersection, with paths both to the left and right. On the wall in front of you, are three blood-stained paintings of the same woman. On the floor, the Hippocratic oath, "Above all, do no harm," is written in blood, with Steinman's red signature next to it, with what appears to be a bloody smiley face dotting his "I". Propped up against the wall, is another audio diary.

"You'll be wanting to keep an eye out for Steinman. It won't be hard to find him. Just follow the blood." Atlas says. You pick the diary up, and play it.

"Adam presents new problems for the professional. As your tools improve, so do your standards. There was a time, I was happy enough to take off a wart or two, or turn a real circus freak into something you can show in the daylight. But that was then, when we took what we got, but with Adam... the flesh becomes clay. What excuse do we have not to sculpt, and sculpt, and sculpt, until the job is done?"

It's the same voice from before. With the evidence in front of you, you're pretty sure this is Steinman. You head to the left after discarding it, and another one sits at your feet.

"I am beautiful, yes. Look at me, what could I do to make my features finer? With Adam and my scalpel, I have been transformed. But is there not something better? What if now it is not my skill that fails me...but my imagination?" Steinman again. You take out your radio.

"Hey Jim. Aren't there any happy stories down here in Rapture? Maybe…I don't know, some cats rescued from a tree last Wednesday, or some starving orphans stumbling upon president Taft's hidden stash?"

"Tha's pretty funny, mate. Down here, you either laugh or go nuts. Sometimes both."

"Hey," You ask. "Were you born in America, or did you come over here?"

"Came over from Ireland," He said. "I loved my country. Fantastic people, places, stories. I just heard so much about the States that I wanted to give it a try. And, one of my cousins had already gone. He told me how great it was. When I got there, it seemed to be true. T'was a beautiful place. I remember getting off the boat and looking up at the lights in the sky. The lights in the buildings that were tall as hell. The snow on the ground and all the people movin about. Soon, I found out what a shit hole it really was. Although, my time there wasn't all bad. I met a beautiful woman named Maira who happened to be on the same boat with me. She became my wife, and we had a little boy named Patrick. Then we got poor. We lost our house. Then, we met this bloke named Ryan. He was goin around, telling people about this new place he was buildin'. But, he wanted us all to keep it on the down low. Didn't want the "govment pigs" to find out. Said to only tell our closest family. He wanted lots of people, but he was still careful. I was skeptical, but there really was no other choice, and I wanted the best for my family. So I went to Rapture. Me and my family. And…it was great, for a time. Until Fontaine. The Bastard. So yeah, Jack. Rapture was like a second America. But America wasn't no fucken utopia. And neither is this place."

"Hey, you ever think about writing an autobiography?" You ask.

"People only want to hear about the famous ones. They don't give a damn about the local barber, or that nice old couple down the street, or the lad who goes house to house, cutting grass for ten bucks." Atlas says.

"I hear that. But not all people are like that."

"Yeah, but it's pretty hard not to be cynical in a place like this."

"Yeah," You agree. "Having faith in people is tough sometimes. You find a door on your left and go through it. You turn a corner and see a long green carpet and a tennis ball-shooting machine. There's a plasmid on the ground it seems. With a breath, you inject yourself. It's not as bad this time, in fact, it actually feels pretty good. You experience that high, again. A tennis ball shoots out inches from your face, and you reflexively react. You open your eyes and see that the ball is hovering in front of your open palm.

"Holy shit." You stare, and then smile. You drop it, then run to the opposite end of the hall, in front of the machine.

FOOP

You hold your hand out, and the ball stops in mid-air, right in front of you. You push forwards, and the ball flies forward and crashes into the machine. It breaks, and you chuckle. You leave the room with your newfound power. You walk through the depressing halls of Rapture and realize that this area is pretty void of anything attempting to murder you. You shrug. On your way you see large advertisements, large buildings in the windows and flashing neon lights.

_Atlas was right,_ You think. _This is like a second America._ Walking, you also find plenty of more diaries.

"Hey Brenda-you mind telling me why…."

"Ryan didn't come to see me since the New Year's attack, not once…."

"Now I realize you're a posh sort of geezer, but once Rapture starts leaking…"

"I was at German prison camp only of sixteen years old when I realize I have love for science. German doctor, he make experiment. Sometime, he make scientific error. I tell him of this error, and this make him angry. But then he asks, 'how can a child know such a thing?' I tell him, 'Sometimes, I just know.'"

This last one was interesting. It's a woman speaking, and she sounds German. Most of the diaries you pick up are just average people with every day qualms. The next one you pick up discarded at the top of some stairs.

"When Picasso became bored of painting people, he started representing them as cubes and other abstract forms. The world called him a genius! I've spent my entire surgical career creating the same tired shapes, over and over again: the upturned nose, the cleft chin, the ample bosom. Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could do with a knife what that old Spaniard did with a brush?"

Steinman. He certainly liked to hear himself talk. This one however was disturbing. The man sounds like he was spiraling down. You move on.

"Today I had lunch with the Goddess, 'Steinman,' she said... 'I'm here to free you from the tyranny of the commonplace. I'm here to show you a new kind of beauty.' I asked her, 'What do you mean, goddess?' 'Symmetry, dear Steinman. It's time we did something about symmetry...'"

"Aphrodite is walking the halls - shimmering, like a scalpel... 'Steinman,' she calls, 'Steinman! I have what you're looking for! Just open your eyes!' And when I see her, she cuts into me a thousand beautiful pieces."

_He's still alive?_ You wonder. _I really have to kill this guy. _

You see a large door in front of you, hanging over it, is a sign that says 'Surgery'. The door opens at your approach, and you walk into another see-through tube. A fish outside stops and looks at you. It seems to say, _What the fuck are you doing here?_

"If I knew, I would tell you." Great, now you talk to fish. You open the door at the end. You're in a large open room. There's a wall blocking your way from the main area, but you can go around it. You stop with a shiver when you hear a familiar voice.

"Why do we have two eyes…two ears…two arms, two legs, two breasts….is there some law that says we must?"

You hear a loud explosion. When you go around, rubble is blocking the only door. You can't get in. Damn. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a splicer. He is standing on a balcony high above you. He throws a grenade with a shriek. You smirk.

"Thanks."

You stop the grenade in mid-air and hurl it at the debris. It blows away and the door falls off it's hinges. You step through and run down a long hall. When you get to the end, you press against the wall, being cautious of your movements. There's a door to your right. You go in. The room has two doors, to the left and right, which lead to another part of the room. The room itself is dimly lit. In the center, there's a see-through glass. Steinman is standing at a surgical table. He's stabbing a dead body.

"What can I do with this one Aphrodite?"

"She won't-"

Violent stabbing.

"Stay-"

"Still!"

"I want to make them beautiful…but they always turn out wrong! That one," A light comes on. A corpse is crucified to a round table to the right, suspended in the air.

"Too fat. This one," He points to the left and another crucified body hangs. "Too tall."

"This one," One of the grisly crucifixions appears above him. You duck down, so he won't notice you. Your breathing is heavy.

"What's that, Goddess? An intruder?"

Shit.

He's looking at you now.

"He is ugly…ugly…"

"Ugly!" He shrieks this last insult, and starts firing a machine gun. It breaks the glass. You hit the floor, and crawl over to the nearest door, you stand up and dart through it. You fire your pistol towards the surgery table. The floor is blue and black, in a checkered pattern. The ceiling is corroded. You see a large table near the back. You duck behind it as Steinman rushes at you. You use your mind to lift the table and hurl it at him. It breaks and he falls, landing in a puddle of water. You shoot a bolt of electricity at him, frying Steinman alive. His skin boils. He falls back. You approach him, and use your mind to lift the key card from his pocket. You take it, and exhale. You take out your radio.

"You all right?" Atlas asks. "'Bout time someone took care a' that sick bastard. Make sure you get the key off Steinman, and make your way back to Emergancy Access. I'm makin my way down to Port Neptune meself. I'll be there soon enough."

"Sounds good," You reply. You backtrack out of the main hall and notice, in the tube like area, a fork. You go down this path and through the door. A flaming Big Daddy flies into the west wall. To your right, a glass door slides open as you near it. There is an ornate chandelier on the ceiling. You see a little sister, backing up. A wicked looking splicer approaches her with a pipe, malice in his eyes.

"Now it's just you, and me, and all the Adam I can drink…" He lunges forward and she screams. In an instant, his head explodes like an overripe watermelon, blood and brain and skull on the floor. Thud. You look up and see a woman on the balcony with a shotgun. She looks…human.

"Stay away from her, or it will be you who is shot next." She says in a German accent. Your radio crackles and you pull it out.

"Easy now Doctor, he's just looking for a wee bit of Adam. Just enough to get by." Atlas replies.

"I will not have him hurt my little ones!"

"It's okay lad," Atlas says. "That's not a child. Not anymore it ain't. Doctor _Tennenbaum_ made sure of that."

"Do not hurt her! Have you no heart?" You're not sure what to say in this situation.

"Ha," Atlas laughs. "That's a pretty sermon comin from the girl who cooked up them creatures in the first place. Took fine little girls and turned them into _that_, didn't yeh?" You look at the 'girl'. She runs to the back of the room near a pile of debris.

"Listen to me, Boyo. You won't survive without the Adam those _things_ are carryin. Are you prepared to trade your life, the life of my _wife_ and _child_ for Tennenbaum's little Frankenstein?"

You nod your head grimly and approach her.

"Here!" Tennenbaum calls out to you. She throws you a bottle filled with red liquid. "There is another way. Use this. Rescue her. I will make it worth your while."

"So, do I make her drink this?" You ask.

"Yes. She will not like it, but it is the antidote to that….disease I gave her and the others."

You approach the Sister and she backs into a box. Standing over her, you wonder what to do. Atlas has a point. And, if you save her-what next? As Little Sisters, they can heal any injury, but as little girls? You decide. It seems like your moral imperative to save her…free her. From this place. And there's only one way to do that. Even if it costs you your humanity. You hold your hand to her face, and she glows green. A cloud of gas covers the area, when it clears, she is lying on the ground, unmoving. A slug crawls out of her mouth and you grab it. You crush it with your fist and drink it's blood. You feel stronger, but depressed.

Atlas speaks up.

"That should do it. You did the right thing. Those things aren't human anymore. And it's Tennenbaum we've got to thank for that. You put it's out of it's misery, and you increased your chances for survival."

"So why do I still feel like a dick?" You ask. Since it was a rhetorical question anyway, there's no response. Tennenbaum looks at you from the balcony.

"How can you do this…to a child. There are others. Will you be as cruel to them?" She runs off, somewhere into the city.

"If you see another of those things, it'd be best to gather Adam from em." Atlas says solemnly. You head over to another one of those vending machines, like the one from before. You get a couple of plasmids and…well, upgrade yourself. You see an audio diary nearby.

"Not only are those little girls veritable Adam factories, they're nearly indestructible. They regenerate any wounded flesh with stem versions of the dead cells. But their relationship with the implanted slugs is symbiotic... if you harvest the slug, the hose will die. So you see it's not like 'killing,' as Tenenbaum said. It's more like removing a terminal patient from life support." Strange. It's Steinman again. You feel a little better now, which is weird. As you go back to Emergancy Access, you have to wonder if you did the right thing.


	4. Handshake

"Speaking of curiosity, your curious about what happens after you die, right? Guess what? _I know…_I'll give you a hint. You'll want to pack as much living as possible into the next couple of minutes."

-Valve's Portal

**4.**

Rapture died. The world lived on.

There was no funeral.

There were no kind words to say in memory.

There were no mock interested guests that only really cared about snacks.

There was only an unmarked grave at the bottom of the sea.

Rapture was like that guy. You _know_ him, the guy no one really _knew_. Spoke only to get what was needed. When Rapture died, nobody really gave a shit.

"Who died?"

"-Oh really? I'm _so_ sorry."

Rapture died. The world kept chuggin along.

Toot. Toot. You drift in and out of consciousness as you descend in the bathysphere, sometimes pondering life and the end of said existence, sometimes thinking about Italian porn stars.

You're in a Kurt Vonnegut novel. He's clearly fucking with you.

You're in a Chuck Palahniuk novel. This is the dark, disturbing, slightly satirical mind of Mr. Palahniuk alright. It'll probably have some commentary on things social or pollitical. OH, and Atlas will turn out to be your alter ego or something (maybe he'll want to bring down the walls of modern society while he's at it). Just. Fucking. Wait. That's exactly what'll happen. The sphere comes to a shaky stop and you stumble out. The corridors are narrow and this place is dark-only illuminated by burning piles of rubble and corpses. The floor is flooded up to your ankles. You hold your head and sway.

"STOP FUCKING WITH ME CHUCK, YOU SURREALIST BASTARD!!" You yell, angrilly. You pull out your radio.

"Hey Jim," You say to Atlas, chuckling in a stifled histeria. "This is all real, right? We're not in some fucking B-movie, are we?"

"…Excuse me?"

"You heard me. None of this, absolutely none of it is real. I'm going to wake up soon, I know it. Maybe I'm back in high school and this is only a nightmare. Maybe I'm in a coma. Maybe I'm a drug addict, and I'm in rehab. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe this is aaaaall in my head."

"…..All right mate, you need to get a hold of yourself. It's easy to delude yourself. Say it's not real. It's much more difficult to accept things the way they are. This place is as real as anything else in this world. My family is real to me. So you need to get your damn head out your ass and stop bein a child."

"Well, gee. I'm sorry for being a little shaken up. After all, I did just kill at least what was a little girl. I'd say that's a pretty hard thing to adjust to, hmn?" You say, then pause.

"….Sorry Jim," You say. "I'm being an asshole."

"I understand how you feel. I just needed to get you thinkin clearly again. My family's trapped in a submarine somewhere in Fontaine's Fisharies. I'll meet you there." Static. Atlas had left. You adjust yourself and look around. A man is crucified to a wall, with the word "smuggler" written above him in his own blood. He's been stripped of his clothes, and has marker drawn on his face, which is only still half there. Without a jaw, his tongue hangs down almost comically from his mouth. He has no eyes.

You shudder, and walk away. You go through a large steel door and find yourself in a flooded hallway. Bodies float lifelessly outside the windows. At the end of the hall it turns right, and the shilouette of someone-or something-flickers against a glowing background. As your shoe sinks into the ankle deep water, a voice stops you dead in your tracks. It is quiet and throaty, and ancient. A woman's voice.

"_What crawls in my gardens_…."

You lower your machine gun and you slowly make your way to the turn in the hallway. At the end you go through a door and out into a much narrower hallway, with a steel grate on the ceiling. Rose petals slowly fall through it.

"_Like days that pass like wind…."_

With a shudder, you head through the door and out into the Wharf. And that's exactly what it is. The massive area bathed in an eerie green light coming from the large windows. The large dock has many levels-at different sights. It looks like the water below was drained long ago. A Big Daddy stomps along down below, and for a moment it looks at you with it's dull yellow eyes. Then it looks away, apparently having lost interest. One of those girls follows it, skipping along and humming a familiar tune-one that you can't put your finger on. Instead of delving farther down this decaying wooden fishing pier, you go through a door that you notice on your right. As you come out from a wide hallway, you come out into another room, which consists of a pier, and a ground floor which is slightly flooded. Noticing a door at the bottom of some stairs, you take that path. Inside, a dead man is propped up againtst a large pillar. The man is wearing a persian mask, for whatever reason. The ceiling is grated and there is a large metal door with an eye-slot past the pillar. A large sign hangs above, reading, "Fontaine Fisharies." To the left of the door, a small table with one broken leg sits at an awkward angle. Expecting the worst, you knock on the door with your wrench. The slot opens, and a man wearing a welder's mask peers out. You're shocked to see actual human contact-that is-if he is human.

"Atlas radioed on ahead. Says you were looking for an invite to the f-f-fisheries. Nuts, I say. But, if'n you heads up to the wharf master's office and find ol' Peach a research camera, maybe I could manage an invite." The man's voice sounds strange-you can't quite make out the dialect. It sounds like he smokes way too much, or maybe he's just sick-either way-you find his voice somewhat comical. He sounds old, too. Maybe sixty? He also has somewhat of a stutter. A clank of metal from above.

"W-w-what was that?" The man asks nervously?

"_It's so nice to see you again, after all these years…"_ The man lets out for a brief second what is undeniably a chuckle.

"You, my friend, are fucked." With that, he slams the eye-slot shut. Something crawls out of the grating and onto the ceiling. It drops down, about three feet in front of you. Other than the splatter of blood on her face and the whole-hooks for hands thing, she was beautiful. She had long black hair and ice blue eyes. Her face and skin are pale, though her breasts are full and rightly sized, and she has curves in all the right places. Her clothes are gray and torn. You back up against the door. Just as you're about to send one thousand volts into her body, one of those security robots you saw when you first came to Rapture comes out of seemingly nowhere and shoots two bullets through her chest. She shrieks and flips backward, trying to evade the machine, but to no avail. Its turret shoots her full of holes and she falls face up, a look of genuine surprise in death.

"You owe me, Friend." The man said, once again opening the slot.

"…Thanks," You say, unsure of his real intentions.

"That one's too tough for you. Look on the conveyor belt, you'll find something to keep you alive. Now go get that camera and then snapshots of those that crawls on the ceiling. Then I'll let you into the fisheries. Just remember, sonny friend: I smell an ounce of Fontaine on you, and I'll have you in a box! Atlas gives you the vouch, but I ain't turning my eye just on his say so!" Slam. He's closed it again.

"Tha's Peach Wilkins," Atlas says. "He's a grown man, and he's jumping at ghosts. Fontaine's dead and everybody knows it. In the ground for months, and half the place is _still_ jumping at his shadow. Christ, even Ryan. Never mind all that. We have work to do." You look at the table, and a grenade launcher sits there. Holy shit. Now this is firepower. You take the large somewhat heavy weapon and rest it on your shoulder. You leave the room, go back up the stairs, and back into the wharf. Turning, you look at the big daddy. It looks at you. You point your newly acquired weapon at it, and fire. The Big Daddy flies backwards into a wall from the explosion, and it slumps to the ground in a flaming heap. The small girl screams. You approach her and put your hand over her mouth.

You do what you have to do. It doesn't get easier. You feel the Adam entering your body and take a deep, somewhat satisfied breath. As a splicer charges you from a broken doorway, you raise your hand to him and a pillar of flame flies from the palm of your hand, engulfing him. You walk through the door he just came out of. You feel like you're in a cabin of some sort, because that's what it feels like from your surroundings. All wood, paintings hanging from the wall, a long set of stairs leading to what appears to be a bar above you. Atlas radios you and says,

"Me wife, Moira -- she's a right pain in the neck. But she's a beauty and she means the world to me. I can't help but feel God's punishing me for bringing her and Patrick to this place. I thought this would be a better life for us. Can you imagine a bigger fool than me?"

"You're not a fool, man," You say sympathetically. "You made a mistake. It happens. What about God-you think he's above judgment? I sometimes wonder if he deserves a little of the blame for making us in the first place."

"I like you Jack. You've got some interesting ideas. Now hurry. I can't stand the thought of my family in that filthy sub anymore." As you walk forward, your foot touches something small and hard. Looking down, you find a brown Polaroid camera. You pick it up, and put it in your jeans pocket. You stride swiftly up the stairs and into-yes-a bar. You notice that several bottles of whiskey sit on the table. As much as you want to get smashed right now, you know that would be irresponsible. Out of the corner of your eye you see one of those freakish spider-like splicers, and at your foot, a shotgun. It drops and rushes you and you shoot it in the head. He or she-you can't quite tell falls quite headless-to the floor. You take out your camera and take a picture. Then, clever bastard that you are-you tear off one of his/her rotting arms-and almost throw up from the smell-and take another snapshot, only from a different angle where the head isn't so visible. For the last picture, you set the body aflame with a snap of your fingers and the third corpse is produced. Hey, Wilkins is getting what he wants, three different corpses. You smile, feeling smug for the first time in a while.

"Looks like that should about do it, Eastman," Atlas blackly jokes. "Head on back to Fontaine Fisheries when you're ready soldier, would you kindly?"

"Sure thing, _sarge_," You say, trying to smile. "While I'm at it, would you like me to do some push-ups as well?" There was more forced laughter from the other end. Atlas gets serious for a moment.

"A word to the wise, Jacko. Ol' Peach seems about as straight as a dog's hind leg. Keep an eye out."

Back at the fisheries, you knock on the iron door with the amazingly quick developed photos and camera both in your pocket.

"The wharf rat didn't get himself offed? You got something for me and my crew, or are you just looking to get criticized? You set here a spell. I needs to put on some coffee. Maybe puts on silverware and the like."

The metal door slides up, and reveals a very small room, which seems to serve as an air lock-or something to that extent, or at least an indoor porch sort of area with two steel doors. It looks like the entrance to a cave, with a puddle of water on the rock floor, a stalactite hanging from the ceiling and something that looked like a garbage can, labeled "Pneumo."

"Nobody walks into my swampy carrying the heat," Peach says, with what you're almost sure is a mock attitude. "Put your weapons in the Pneumo, and I'll let you in." His dialect is kind of pissing you off. You hesitate with your weapons.

"If that's his price, your gonna have to pay it. But he can't very well take away your plasmids, now can he?" Atlas asks, with a smile in his voice.

A smile of your own crosses your face, one of sudden realization. Then you laugh and dump all your weapons in the bin. The door in front of you opens and you walk into a freezing cold storage cell. The room is big, with a large pipe running vertically in the middle of it, and several large round vaults on the walls. All of a sudden, a thick fog covers the area, making it hard to see.

"H-hey!" You shout. "What the hell?"

"Now, I bet when your boss wiggled out of Hell, he done told the Devil he'd be right back," Peach's voice echoed from nowhere. "And the Devil said 'Sure thing, Mr. Fontaine. I'll hold you a spot.' Ryan promised Fontaine was dust, and now here you are, doing his dirty. I guess that makes Ryan a bum and you a–"

A manic shriek, and a short, somewhat fat man with a welder's mask comes barreling out of the fog, ramming his elbow into your gut.

"BAAAASTAAAAAAAARD!" He shrieks as he runs off into the fog. Down on your knees, catching your breath, you steady your hand and follow his voice. You think of flames and hear an ear-piercing scream. The man runs through the fog, ablaze; skin being melted by the intense heat. After a while, Peach gets exhausted and slumps against the pipe, a skeleton with melted flesh and charred bones. You turn and grab your weapons, before heading into a gateway, past the pipe. What follows is a twisting walkway, leading down to a similarly frozen yet darker room.

In front of you is an archway with another walkway heading down. You go into it and instead of rock; the narrow corridor is made of steel. Pipes run along the walls, some spewing steam. You duck under it and continue. You start to remember another point in time. You and your brother are sitting in your house. You hog the television, involved in the basketball game. You're visiting over the weekend from college. Your brother sits down on the couch across from your chair. "So, what do you see in this?" He asks. "They dribble a ball around, try to get it in, then people talk about it for an hour." He sucks on a Strawberry Popsicle, holding a bowl underneath it, so it won't drip-which-in the summer is likely to happen. You have one too, only you have Grape.

"It's an honorable sport," You say. "There's lots of athleticism and strategy in it. At least I don't play video games. I'd rather shoot a ball in a hoop than shoot the death aliens in Blood Wars. Isn't that the new one you got? Bloody Monkeys? Blood Stone? Babies of Blood?" Your brother laughs.

"Well, I like to play it, but not watch it," He says. "Hey. You've got a ball, and there's a court across the street." You smile at him, and after getting the ball; you and him head out and cross the street of your suburban town, onto a large basketball court.

"All right, warm up," You say. "After that, we play until eleven." You pass the ball to him and he dribbles. Then he carries the ball and shoots it in.

"I love your playing," You say. "Soon you'll be ready for the NBA."

"_Sorry _if I'm not as good as you are. I haven't had half your practice." He hands you the ball and you start dribbling around him.

"Game starts now," You say. He tries to play defense, but you trick him and dunk the ball. "Whoo! One to nothing." You grin. The game only lasts about 15 minutes and you let him win, 11 to 10.

"Miss having you around all the time," He says, sitting on a bench. "Playing _Mario Kart_, growing up together." He frowns. "You always used beat me in that game. But not anymore! I had a lot of practice. Hey, you ever feel sometimes life is too good to be real?" You dribble around and shoot, and consider his existential musings with a casual mentality.

"Yup," You say. "Didn't I tell you that life is an illusion?"

"Yeah. And the only real things are the bonds we share with others. I heard that in a movie once."

"Just like I raised em," You say, mimicking your father. You both laugh.

That was then, and this is now.

"I'm right outside the submarine bay, but I can't get in. I need you for that. My family can't be more than a hundred yards away." Atlas. Of course.

"Hold on Jim," You say. "I'm almost there." As you enter a cavernous room and trudge through the knee-deep water, you try not to think of your little brother crying. About your family, and about the man delivering the news that you were in a plane crash, and no one ever found the body. You enter a room with stacks of crates and a large metal harpoon gun. Farther on, you see the submarine bay, and a way to get down. You're on top of a cliff-like structure, and jumping from here would break a leg or worse. You figure there's a path to get down. You see a man far down below. You can't see much, but you can tell he has short black hair and a brown jacket.

"Hey, Atlas!" You shout. He turns around and waves, but you still can't see him well.

"Hit the switch up there in the control booth, and let me in! I think it's time to shake hands and get acquainted." He shouts all this, then turns back to the sub out on the pier. You turn left and duck into a small stone alcove. You walk until you reach a window overlooking the sub, and a switch below it. There is a doorway to your left. Your radio buzzes.

"Atlas?" You ask. The voice from the end is definitely not Atlas's.

"You've had your fun, but enough is enough. If you pull that switch, you'll learn what it truly means to be my enemy." Ryan. You try to respond, but realize it's a one-way message. You take a deep breath. _Fuck you Ryan_. You pull the switch. A blaring alarm goes off. The door to your left slams shut, sealing you in.

"No…no, not FUCKING AGAIN!" You kick the door in anger. The lights in the booth dim. You see a splicer down below, approaching the sub from the far left. You pound on the window and shout his name, but the room is soundproof.

"You blow a fuse up there?" Atlas calls out. Of course, you can't hear him. "Can't see a damn thing in that booth. Give me a tick, and I'll get you out of there," Lower, directed at the sub. "Moira, can you hear me in there darling?" The splicer moves over to some sort of console and starts doing something with it. Ryan's voice fills you with dread.

"So dark in here…if only your friend could look up and see you, maybe you could warn him. If only you could do something, anything except just stand here…and watch him die."

You back up and shoot the glass with your gun. The glass seems to absorb the bullet in a way that you're sure is impossible.

"YOU FUCKING BASTARD!" You shout and pound on the glass.

"ATLAS! ATLAAAS!" A wooden beam falls from above, and a splicer clings to the window and tries to break it with her hooks.

"Splicers!" You hear Atlas shout. "They're everywhere!" He radios. "I can't hold em, got to fall back! Get me family out and we'll regroup as soon as we can! And if it comes down to a decision between my family and me, save _them_." The door to your left opens and you run out.

"Fuck you!" You shout into the radio. "I'm not letting you die! You're my only friend down here!" You run through a wooden floored pier like area-but most of the details are blurred because you're not really paying attention. Taking out your tommy gun, you run forward. Numerous splicers get in your way, but you mow them down, screaming like Clint Eastwood. In a moment of mad clarity, you find that you're somewhat enjoying yourself. You see a pool of gasoline on the ground and a group of splicers. You light it on fire, charging straight through. You notice that your skin is immune to the flames with surprise.

"Get out! Get out and we'll regroup!" Atlas shouts. You ignore him. Running down a narrow corridor, you can see the sub and you make a mad dash. The sub explodes.

"The sub! NOOOOOOOOOOO!" Atlas's voice echoes across the room and is burned into your mind. You walk out into the room and drop to your knees. The flaming wreckage of the sub lies everywhere, and Atlas is gone. Your radio buzzes. Ryan's voice mixes smug satisfaction with fury.

"You ooze in like an assassin, and try to sneak out like a thief. You're not CIA. _Who are you_? Why have you come here? There's two ways to deal with a mystery. Uncover it…or eliminate it." You stand up and run into the cave entrance to your left. You make your way across a bridge and into another bulkhead. Atlas's hysterical voice comes to you via radio.

"Get out…get out and get to Arcadia…Jesus Christ…" You don't know what to say. You were going to meet him. You were going to shake his hand. You realize then that you hate Andrew Ryan with a renewed passion.


	5. The Artist

Great artistic talent in any direction... is hardly inherent to the man. It comes and goes; it is often possessed only for a short phase in his life; it hardly ever colors his character as a whole and has nothing to do with the moral and intellectual stuff of the mind and soul. Many great artists, perhaps most great artists, have been poor fellows indeed, whom to know was to despise.

-Hilaire Belloc

**5.**

"Moira...Patrick...Ain't that _just like Ryan_, waits until we're almost out, and then he pulls the string. We'll find the bastard. We'll find him, and we'll tear his heart out." You can hear his voice shuddering and the immeasurable rage coming from the other side of the radio transmission. You don't know what to say, so you don't. What do you say to someone who just lost their family? There's a wind blowing through the cave, and standing still, you feel cold in so many ways.

"Atlas I...." You say, searching for something to console him. Anything. "I'm sorry."

A pause.

"You didn't kill them Jack. Don't apologize. God damn, _please_ don't apologize." His voice fades out and is replaced by static.

"I came to this place...to build the impossible," Andrew Ryan says solemnly with a suppressed anger. "You came, to rob what you could never build. A Hun, gaping at the gates of Rome. Even the air you breathe is sponged from my account. Well, breathe deep, so that later you might remember the taste." The corridor you stand in is uncomfortably thin and dark. There are a line of stairs that lead to an ornate door, which you take. You open it and gasp and walk into a beautiful world. There are trees everywhere. Large tomb-like structures jut from the ground, flora growing around them. Grass beneath your feet and a waterfall on the far wall, overlooking a river and a large bridge on your left which leads to a large neon adorned house with ferns hanging from it.

"This is Arcadia," Atlas says. "Despite the kind of man he is, you can't help but be in awe at his craftsmanship. There's a bathysphere not to far from here, in the rolling hills. From there on, it's down to the devil himself. Then all debts will be paid in full." The last part of this Atlas says with a sinister malice that makes you cringe, just slightly.

"I'll make sure he pays for what he did." You say, some anger in your own voice. You cross the bridge, enter the house and leave through the other side. As you make your way through Arcadia, your childlike wonder never seems to go away. There is a golden glow that bathes the forest coming from the see-through glass ceiling, and the trees go up for miles, twisting and turning and branching off in several places. You find yourself in front of the bathysphere, with a sign over it reading "Rolling Hills." You step in and pull the lever. As the sphere sinks deeper, you sink deeper into your own mind. You remember a point in time. You were six years old, and your little brother had just been born. You amazingly remember (vividly in fact) when you were watching television. You were upset because the hero of the show was being beaten by the villain and was being left to die. Then he killed the hero's family. You started to cry because it was sad. So damn sad. You remember running up to your parent's bedroom and your mother seeing you crying and you jumping into her arms. You cried on her shoulder. She hugged you, and rocked you and stroked your hair because you were her child, her baby. She told you that everything would be okay, and that she would never let anything hurt you.

You wish your mother was here now.

The doors of the sphere open and you step out. You look to be in some sort of train station or whatnot, and there's a big sign over one of the doors that says "Rapture Metro." You go through it and find yourself on a large platform. Instead of trains, this place has another bathysphere at the end of it.

"You're almost there. The sphere to Ryan is up on ahead. Ryan's handed the keys to Fort Frolic over to a guy named Sander Cohen. Cohen's an artist, says some. He's a Section Eight, says I. I've seen all kinds of cutthroats, freaks, and hard cases in my life...but Cohen, he's a real lunatic, a dyed in the wool psychopath..." Atlas's voice gets cut off by static.

"Atlas...? Jim...?" You ask.

All of a sudden, the bathysphere sinks down into the water, and large red curtains drape across the floor. A large rabbit mask rises slowly; a grim monolith. Pink plastic dancers rise up and down, plastic bodies bent in unnatural ways.

"_Ahhhhhhhh..._that's better...Atlas, Ryan, Atlas, Ryan, duh duh duh duh duh duhh...time was you could get something decent on the radio,"

The voice echoes not only from your radio, but seemingly from everywhere.

"The artist has a duty to seduce the ear and delight the spirit...so say goodbye to those two blowhards, and hello, to an evening with Sander Cohen!" You awkwardly back out the door, back into the main hall where you came in. Your attention is turned towards two doors with the words "Welcome to Fort Frollic," over them.

"Ohhh, I can smell the malt vinegar in this one. I've waited so long for something tasty to come to this little burg, but all that pass are yokels and rubes...Where are my manners? Come in! Come in!!! Sander Cohen awaits you...at the Fleet Hall!" The doors open on their own, and for a brief moment, as the doors close behind you, you're submerged in darkness, once again inside the womb. At the bottom of the sea, and then the lights come on one by one, revealing exactly what an evening with Sander Cohen would entail. All around you, there are large vertically sliding doors. On your left, there is a large stage, curtains drawn, two lights shining down at two statues, one man and woman, dancing gracefully, frozen in place. You recognize the irony. Beyond the curtain is a large On your right is a large staircase that goes up and splits in two ways. Up above on the second floor are various attractions labeled with large glowing neon signs.

"Welcome. Welcome to Fort Frolic." Cohen's voice rings in your head, and you cringe.

"Honestly though, I'm really glad you stopped by. It gets really lonely at the bottom of the sea-did you know that? Oh well, you will. Soon enough."

One of the vertically sliding doors opens.

"By the way, no need to thank me for jamming the signal of those boors, Atlas and Ryan. Let them fight. I would like to spend some time with you. But I test you, little moth, because I test all my disciples, all my potential friends. This place used to be wonderful, and I used to make peoples' lives better with my paintings and my plays and sculpting...but then they all died. And I fear I am now losing my mind," He pauses, as if not sure what to say next.

"Good luck," He decides to say. You walk up the stairs and a glass door with "Fleet Hall" above it opens. You walk in and you find yourself in a large theatre. The seats are filled with statues, laughing, crying, staring listlessly. There is a man on stage, playing the piano. You walk over to one of the statues.

"Mind if I sit here?" You ask. When it doesn't respond, you sit down next to it and watch. Cohen's voice booms from somewhere.

"Allegro, allegro," The man playing speeds up, bringing the music to a climax. "Da da da da da da duh-presto, presto, No no no!" The man stops. He is wearing a mask.

"I'm trying, I'm trying," He says, voice cracking. "Please...."

"Once again, young Fitzpatrick." The man replays the melody. You stare, fixated for some reason. You find the music pleasing. He gets to the climactic part again. "Da da da da da da da daa.....No!"

"Cohen you sick fuck, let me-" His words are cut off by the exploding piano. The flames dance around his corpse.

"Oh, that was quicker than I hoped..." Cohen says. "Come down now, little moth. Life, death...the burden of the artist is to capture. "See young Fitzpatrick here on the stage. Use your camera, take him as he is now, so I may remember him..."

_What is it about this place with dead bodies and photography? _You think as you pull out your camera and take a picture. You can see his toucan facemask, purple and green and burnt. His name was Kyle Fitzpatrick. Who? Kyle died and no one cared. He died thousands of miles from home, at the bottom of the sea. That could be you. You wish your mother was here now.

"And now you've got Fitzpatrick, caught in his moment of glory. It seems you've got the eye of the shutterbug, little moth. Now head to the atrium and place his photograph in my masterpiece...and so our collaboration commences. I know why you've come. You've your own canvas, one you'll paint with the blood of a man I once loved...Yes, I'll send you to Ryan, but first you must be part of my masterpiece. Hurry now...my muse is a fickle bitch with a very short attention span..."

_The Atrium_

"Do you see it? When I am dust, this is what they'll point to. My quadtych! My masterpiece. Go ahead, don't be afraid, touch it."

The curtains from before are pulled apart, revealing what was hidden. With the light shining down on it, it almost glows. It is a grouping of statues, but they are all men, all rabbit faces. One kneels, with a picture frame propped next to him. Two stand proudly, holding another, and two rest on each other's shoulder, holding another. The final frame is held by two hanging, upside-down from string. You realize he wants you to place Fitzpatrick's picture in a frame. You do so.

"Yes, and there's Fitzpatrick, freed of his own kinks and defects. And here's the glorious news... this is just the moment of conception...out in this place, there are three men, all former disciples of mine, all connected by a common thread...betrayal. Find them, little moth, and immortalize their mortality in my quadtych. Go. Once they've been sent to their reward, you shall go to yours, and to Ryan."

Cohen tells you where to go next. You can't say you were listening too closely, but you know what to do.

_Poseidon Plaza_

You're in a tunnel of ice and snow. It's cold. You're glad you brought your warm sweater from home. As the tunnel widens out you find yourself in a fairly large room with ice-sculptures of people, all beautifully made and realistic. There is a sudden drop in temperature and you find yourself on the ground, unable to move. So cold. You hear someone standing near you.

"You think you gonna finish me in here, you old fruit? The other saps you tossed in this meat locker all panicked like rabbits. I just watched and waited. And when they started to kick, I started to scavenge. Made myself a little splicer cocktail I did. If you can't come in from the cold, then you gotta grow ice over your heart. Tell Cohen to go fuck himself."

He's going to leave you to die. Not letting that happen, you instinctively light a flame in the palm of your hand. It warms everywhere, inside and out. With the strength to stand, he turns, surprised. You hold your hand over his face. He screams and writhes, but only for seconds. As he falls on his back in the snow, you see he has the same mask as Fitzgerald. Hmn. Cohen's voice comes back to you.

"That was bracing. Take a photo of him, and place it in the quadtych. I'm feeling full, like a pregnant mother."

You do as you're told.

_Atrium_

"It's coming together...yes...but there will always be Doubters. You don't doubt me, do you? I could never stomach Doubters." Cohen sighs, content that two of the four are done. He tells you that Hector Rodriguez is next.

_???_

You find Hector in a bar. He sits at a table and drinks, yelling all the while.

"How about some fucking _service_ around here?" He slams down his left hand a couple of times.

"Maybe I'll just, y'know, do something? The things that man had me do...fuck you. Who does he think he is? You know what? Art...music...poetry...It's all grift. Cohen's got Ryan wrapped around his finger...and why? Because he tells him what he wants to hear. 'Rise, Rapture, Rise!' Balls. That stuff was stale before it came out Cohen's pen. I'm through with the whole piñata. Let's see that old fruit try an' keep me here..." Upon seeing you, you with your gun, you with the fire in your hand, you with the murderous look on your face, he runs. He stumbles out of his seat and trips. You shoot him before he can reach the door.

_Atrium_

You place the third picture in the frame, not sure why, nor exactly what you're doing. All you know is that you need to kill Ryan. Escape. Buy Atlas that drink. Keep your promise, since you already failed to keep one.

"That's three of four. Wait. What's that look? You don't like it, do you? I don't need to be judged by you...by anyone...screw you! Screw all you _fucking_ Doubters! Here's what I say to all of you!" You half notice every light in the area going red. You half notice _Waltz of the Flowers_ starting up, booming across the room. You half notice the shrieks of a Splicer as she rushes you with a pipe. A hand on her chest. Electrocution. Falling to the floor, dead.

"_Fly away, little moth! Fly!_" They come from the ceiling, they come from the doors, they come from seemingly nowhere. And you kill them all. They seem to dance in time to the song, as do you, as you murder. They light on fire, they fly through the air, their veins course with electricity and they fall. You think you feel the traces of a smile on your face. After what seems like forever, the lights return, the music dims and all the splicers are dead. Cohen's voice speaks.

"I'm _so_ sorry for that outburst. You'll have to forgive an old fool his artistic temperament. The birth is so close now...the labor pains can blur the judgment, and drive the passions of even the finest spirits..."

You accept his apology.

The last one dies easy, doesn't put up much of a fight. You return to the main hall and place the final picture, completing his masterpiece. You hear fanfare, and a light flashes down from above, revealing a tall man in a dark suit and a Rabbit mask at the top of the stairs. Confetti shoots into the air as applause materializes from the ether.

"It....is....accomplished!" Cohen says in a hushed voice. "...Let me see it." He throws off his mask as he walks slowly down the steps. As he goes he waves and blows kisses to the people who are not there.

"My god...my god, my god, my god..." He reaches the bottom of the stairs and you can see his pale face, slicked black hair and tears in his eyes. He looks at the product of your labor and cries. "It's beautiful."

You smile.

"You'll find your path to Ryan clear now," He says, turning towards you. "Tell him I said hello. I want you to know, that you're the best friend I've ever had." He turns around and you shoot him in the head. You take his picture, and then place the photo in his hand.

"That's probably true," You say, and walk away.

_Rapture Metro_

At the Metro station, you hear something buzz you haven't heard buzz in a while. You pull out your radio and press the button.

"What happened to you? I've been trying to raise you for a dog's age. Never mind. Would you kindly leg it over to the sphere and get on down to Hephaestus? It's time to settle up with Ryan."

"Atlas," You say. "It's my fault your family is dead. I'm sorry."

"...Now didn't I tell you not to say that. I swear to god I'll kill you myself If I hear that one more time. For the last _damn _time, it was-not-your-fault. No one could have seen that coming."

You're not entirely convinced.


	6. Atlas and Ryan

_I'm so glad that I've been able to write this story, and that I've come so far with it. I hope you enjoy this chapter. You should. Leave comments please, whether they be positive or negative._

_-The Writer_

"Is it eradicating evil? Or are we like children, left alone in the house at night, who light candle after candle to keep away the darkness. We don't see that the darkness has a purpose – though we may not understand it – and so, in our terror, we end up burning down the house!"

-Margaret Weis

"Some people see the cup as half empty. Some people see the cup as half full. I see the cup as too large."

-George Carlin

**6. **

Welcome to Hephaestus. Your heart is racing and you can almost hear the blood pumping in your veins. This is the home of Andrew Ryan.

"Watch yourself. Ryan's stirring. We best keep to ourselves. It's time to either run the table or go home empty. Ryan's got the genetic key to Rapture, we get that from him and we get out of this hellhole. We don't, then you and I are ghosts." Atlas sounds confident.

"I see Cohen's lost his touch. I knew him when...when he used to believe in the work... in the struggle. And now, he rots in that never land, waiting for someone to come and tell him he's still got it. I suppose that's why he let you live." Ryan says solemnly.

"Oh," You reply. "Cohen wanted me to say hi."

"...Isn't that nice." He says in an unreadable tone before ending his transmission. This area has an awfully bronze motif to it. Stepping out of the sphere, you notice two man-sized bronze generators-in wheel form, spinning in shallow pools of water to the left and right of you. A small staircase leads to a larger platform adorned with a large pillar with a television screen on top and a map lower down. The ceiling is high up, and ornate, decorated with various Greek heroes. There is a door at the opposite end of the room and it opens when you approach. You find yourself in a large tube structure, similar to the ones before, water outside. The whole place is bathed in a golden glow (even the water). A large building towers in the distance, labeled Hephaestus. There is a fork in the tubes. You decide to go right. At the end of a long, wide, winding hallway you find a door. Upon entering it, you see that the floor slopes down, and below is another door. To the left and right, there are giant spinning wheels and long tubes jutting from the far wall to the opposite, filled with a gelatinous off red liquid. You go through the door into a room with a small stairway over to the right. There's a sign on the same wall that says "Office of Andrew Ryan." There's a grim smile on your face. You're going to make him pay. As you go up, you enter into a large room with several stone pillars; various people are crucified to them, disfigured. Ryan's voice rises to your ears.

"A worm looks up and sees the face of God. But look around...it's a regular convention of worms in here. They all had mothers, fathers, people who loved them. They got married, fucked their spouses. What makes you think you're any different? I haven't chosen a spot for you on the wall yet...let me know if you have a preference." A sign hangs from the ceiling, same as before. You know whose office this is. There is a door that is connected to an electrical generator through power cables at the far end of the room. To the left of where you entered, a large sign above the arch, "Hephaestus Core." You enter into an enormous room, with several flights of stairs going down. You are comforted by the sound of Atlas's voice.

"All right, boyo. You're lookin for a bomb. Kyburz built it a while back, all his research seemed right. Apparently, it'll explode and override the power system that's sealin Ryan's door. He calculated the blast radius to be small. If he's wrong, well we just might be fucked."

"There's that amazing confidence I've come to know and love about you," You say, and he laughs. _Soon, _You think, _Soon, we'll be out of this place, and we'll finally be properly introduced. _The floorboards are wooden and a multicolored directory juts out at the top of the first flight of stairs. The whole place is glowing gold. You run down flights of stairs and hear the moan of a Big Daddy somewhere in the distance. You hear the scraping hooks of Spider Splicers on the ceiling. You stop at a floor and go into "Heat Loss Monitoring." A long narrow hallway with a spinning gear in the middle of the floor.

"A man builds a city at the bottom of the sea. That's a marvel," Ryan says. "Another man happens to be on a plane that crash lands on the same city in the middle of the ocean. Why...that sounds more like a miracle." You figure that he's playing mind games with you. He's getting worried, because you're getting closer. You smile. At the end of this room, you come out into a workshop area. There are various notes, and a large cylindrical device on one table.

"Atlas," You say. "I think I've found it."

"Yeah? Is it a little wider on one side?"

"Yeah."

"Painted gold?"

"Yeah...but I don't know why."

"Does it look like it's a real bomb? It better. You got to put it on the core past Geothermal Control, and we'll see if these needlenoses knew what the hell they were talking about." Atlas ended the communication. You pick it up and are surprised how light it is, especially for a large metal bomb. Perhaps it's just you? You leave with the large weapon on your shoulder and head out and down the stairs, to "Geothermal Control."

"Looks like the ocean's got an itch to retake this corner of Rapture. This happened right after the start of the war, read about it in the papers...head on in, I'll see what I can dig up to help." Atlas says.

Inside, there is a pool of water in the middle of the room. Up above, there are two large pipes. On the far side, there is a small wheel, and an elevator behind it. There are two turrets that you quickly hack, just in case.

"I'm no engineer, but if I read these plans right, you can channel that magma flow using the Redirect Valve. It'll boil off that water right quick, and you'll be able to reach the Core. But Ryan's sure to take notice-might want to set up a perimeter, just to be certain." Ah, so that's what was in those pipes. You weren't certain before. You walk over, setting the bomb down, and start to turn the wheel.

Atlas's pleasant Irish accent is replaced by Ryan's menacing Russian one.

"Will these creatures kill you? Even I don't know. As you drag me closer to the abyss, you pull yourself right along with me. I offer you a quick death, parasite. It will be preferable to what you will learn if you win." Atlas, Ryan, Atlas, Ryan, Atlas, Ryan.

The two men in your life.

As you turn the wheel, the splicers come. They get mowed down by the turrets and lava flows out of the pipes into the pool.

"Are they all dead? Hope so. Best be heading on to the Core." Atlas. You head in the elevator and it goes down a floor. Bomb in hand; you speed through a door and into another room with a long walkway, leading to a large elevator, lava below.

"So far away from your family, from your friends, from everything you ever loved. But for some reason, you like it here...you feel something, you can't quite put your finger on...think about it for a second, and maybe the word will come to you: nostalgia." Ryan. You are so angry at him. Angry because he created this place. Angry because he killed Atlas's family. Angry because he's trying to make you doubt yourself. Well, fuck him. You stand on the elevator and pull the lever, rising up to a large control panel. Calm, cool, and sure of yourself, ignoring Ryan's words that mean nothing.

"What did Atlas offer you? A piece of my plundered city? Mark my words-your only reward will be a knife in the back." Ryan says, and you can't stand it anymore. As you set the bomb and back away you yell into your radio.

"Oh! You mean like how people trusted you? How you said everything was going to be great in paradise? How about that betrayal? Fuck you! Let me tell you something about trust-you _fucking earn it,_" The bomb explodes and the lights go dark as you shout. "Atlas has earned my trust. He saved my life, and he's my only way out of here. You, on the other hand blew up his fucking family! You're trying to kill me! Because of you, I never got to meet this guy-do you know how much I _hate you?! _So why would I listen to a damn thing you say? I'm coming to kill you." There's no response. You breathe heavily.

"Christ, what a racket you're making down there," Atlas says. "If you've surged the core, then there's only one more task to be done. Head on back to Ryan's gate and throw the circuit breaker. That'll let you right into his place." You run back, through the pipes, knowing your destination. Ryan's voice booms from everywhere, no longer just from your radio. He's shouting furiously for the first time you've heard.

"Though my physical defenses fall, you'll not defeat me. My strength is not in steel and fire, but in my _intellect_ and will. You hear me, Atlas!? Andrew Ryan offers you nothing but ashes!" The whole place shakes but you keep on going. You don't stop even when you get to the door outside his office. Ryan speaks again, calmly this time, and it's directed at you.

"In the end, all that matters to me-is me. And all that matters to you-is you. It is the nature of things." When you enter the door, inside is a large room, with a large machine that looks like an organ. It has a television screen on all four sides of it, and Ryan's face appears on them.

" Even in the book of lies, sometimes you find truth...there is indeed a season for all things. And now that I see you flesh-to-flesh and blood-to-blood, I know I cannot raise my hand against you. But know this: you are my greatest disappointment. Does your master hear me? Atlas? You can kill me, but you will never have my city! My strength is not in steel and fire, that is what the parasites will never understand. A season for all things: A time to live, and a time to die. A time to build, and a time to _destroy..._come now, my child. There is one final thing to discuss." A red light flashes on and off and everything shakes.

"What? Ryan's set the core to self-destruct! This is different than what you did...He's got a mind to take down the whole damn city! Get in there and whack the chump before the whole joint blows!" Atlas says. You run up a flight of stairs and crawl into an air vent. You kick out the grate and jump down. You're now in a small room. There is a table to your left, littered with papers and photos. Ryan's office. On the whiteboard above his desk, a multitude of pictures are hung. In large red print are the words: "Would you kindly." There's a picture of you, one of Ryan, Tennenbaum, an Asian man with glasses, and a middle aged bald guy. There are question marks on the paper, and lines drawn between pictures. He's trying to figure out who you are. You smile. He'll find out soon. You turn away from the desk and go through the door on your right. You stop-just for a second, to wonder what that picture of your family is doing there. You go through a narrow hallway, and come out into a darkened room. There is a large see-through glass dividing the room, and Ryan is behind it, playing golf. Ryan was a tall white man, with short dark hair and a mustard color suit. He lines up the putter calmly, as if you weren't there.

"The _assassin_ has overcome my final defense...and now he's here to murder me." He says, in a mock tone. He straightens up from his game and looks at you.

"In the end, what separates a man from a slave? Money, Power? No. A man chooses. A slave obeys." He rests on his club and smiles before continuing.

"Do you think you have memories?" He chuckles lightly. You don't move from your place.

"A house," He says, and you remember your small white house in the suburban neighborhood, leaves falling off trees in autumn.

"A family," He says, and you remember you and your brother, playing basketball, talking, that hair that you told him you would cut. Your mother, who read to you when you were young, and held you to make it better. Your crazy dad, who you admired but who pissed you off at the same time.

"An airplane," He says, and you remember how you first got here.

"A crash...and then this place. Was there really a family? (_An image flashes before you-a small boy in a lab)_ Did that airplane crash, or was it hijacked? (_Flash. You see yourself on the plane, holding a gun)_ Forced down. Forced down by something less than a man, something bred to sleepwalk through life until they are activated by a simple phrase, spoken by their kindly master. Was a man sent to kill? Or a slave? A man chooses, a slave obeys. Come in." He walks to the door on the far left and it opens. Unsure, you walk over to him.

"Stop, would you kindly?" You do. "Would you kindly...powerful phrase...familiar phrase?" He queries. Suddenly Atlas's voice comes rushing back to you in a blur.

_Would you kindly?_

_Would you kindly?_

_Would you kindly take that-_

_Would you kindly get-_

_Would you kindly?_

_Would you kindly?_

_Would you kindly have-_

_...Would you kindly go down to Ryan's office and kill the son of a bitch?_

Snapping back to the present.

"Sit, would you kindly," Ryan says. You do as you're told. "Stand, would you kindly. Run. Stop! Turn." You obey.

"A man chooses. A slave obeys." He hands you his golf club. "Kill." You line up a good shot. You smash it into his face, knocking him onto the ground, he struggles to get up, and when he speaks, his voice is distorted.

"...A man...chooses..." You hit him again. "A slave...obeys..." His nose broken and his face bloody and on his knees, he pulls you close to him.

"_Obey!_" This time you bring it straight down on his head. You remove it with a squishing sound. Ryan's dead. That should have been enjoyable.

"Hurry now...grab Ryan's genetic key! Now would you kindly put it in that goddamn machine?" Atlas's voice is like a ghost. You feel sick. You don't know what just happened. Maybe Atlas will have the answers. You find yourself rushing to grab Ryan's key and jamming it in the machine in the other room. Steam billows out of the machine. Atlas lets out an orgasmic sigh, long and low.

"Atlas?" You ask. "What the hell is going on?"

"Noice work, _boyo_..." His accent is exaggerated, especially on the last part. Your eyes go wide, and then he begins to laugh. When he does, it doesn't sound like Atlas. A long, low rumbling chuckle.

"It's time to end this little masquerade. There ain't no Atlas, kid. Never was. Fella in my line a work takes on a variety of aliases. Hell, once I was even a Chinaman for six months. But you've been a sport, so I guess I owe you a little honesty...the name's Frank Fontaine. Now, I bet that name rings a bell."

"You son of a bitch....YouGODDAMNSONOFABITCHIM_GONNAFUCKINGKILLYOU_!"

"Woah. A little hostile there kid," He laughs. Fontaine speaks with a heavy Brooklyn accent. "I gotta say, I had a lot of business partners in my life, but you...'course the fact that you were genetically conditioned to _bark_ like a cocker spaniel when I said 'Would you kindly', _may_ have had _something_ to do with it. But still...now as soon as that machine finishes processing the genetic key you just fished off Ryan, I'm gonna run Rapture from tits to toes. You been a pal, but you know what they say... Never mix business with friendship. Thanks for everything, kid... Don't forget to say hi to Ryan for me."

"Fucking traitor," You say. "I fucking _trusted _you!" You realize that Fontaine had shut off the connection. The lights start flashing red and you hear the security sirens wailing.

"Watch out mister!" You turn to see a little girl beckoning you. You realize it's a Little Sister; only she's normal now. No longer a host. You follow her to a vent. You duck inside, and another one waits at the opposite end.

"Come with me!" She says. You scramble forward but the metal falls out from beneath you. The last thing you think before passing out is, Atlas and Ryan:

The two men in my life.


End file.
